My FAQs > Operating Systems > Solaris
Last updated on May 09, 2002
Before installing your system, you will need the following information from your network administrator:
Hostname (for example, www) This is the name that you wish to give your host to identify it uniquely on the local area network.
Internet Protocol (IP) address (for example, 204.58.32.46) The IP address is used by the transport layer to locate a specific host on the worldwide Internet.
Domain name (for example, cassowary.net) The domain name is the organization to which your host belongs. All hosts on the Internet must
belong to a domain.
Domain Name Service (DNS) Server (for example, ns) The DNS server maps IP addresses to domain names, and domain names to IP addresses.
Subnet Mask (for example, 255.255.255.0) The mask is used to locate hosts that form part of the same subnet on the local area network.
You will also need to decide which language you wish to use when installing Solaris. The following languages are supported for performing the installation process:
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Simplified Chinese
Spanish
Swedish
Traditional Chinese
There are four primary configurations that have been developed for Solaris Intel, and they are shown along with their approximate installed size in Table 2-1.
|
|
Distribution |
Approximate Size |
|---|---|
|
Entire Distribution Plus Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Support |
2.4Gb |
|
Entire Distribution Without OEM Support |
2.3Gb |
|
Developer System Support |
1.9Gb |
|
End User System Support |
1.6Gb |
|
If the system has never had Solaris installed, you can simply insert the CD-ROM into its caddy and/or CD-ROM drive, and the Web Start installer will start. Alternatively, once the system has started booting, you can click Stop; press the A key; and when you get the ok prompt, you can simply type the following:
ok boot cdrom
You will then see output similar to the following:
Boot device: /sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@6,0:f File and args: SunOS Release 5.8 Version Generic 32-bit Copyright 1983-2000 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Configuring /dev and /devices Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information. Solaris Web Start 3.0 installer English has been selected as the language in which to perform the install. Starting the Web Start 3.0 Solaris installer Solaris installer is searching the system's hard disks for a location to place the Solaris installer software. Your system appears to be upgradeable. Do you want to do an Initial Install or Upgrade? 1) Initial Install 2) Upgrade Please Enter 1 or 2 >
If the following message appeared in the boot messages, then you may elect to perform an upgrade of the existing Solaris installation. However, most administrators would back up their existing software, perform a fresh install, and then restore their data and applications once their system is operational. In this case, we will choose to perform an initial install, which will overwrite the existing operating system.
After you enter 1, and press ENTER, you will see a message like this:
The default root disk is /dev/dsk/c0t0d0. The Solaris installer needs to format /dev/dsk/c0t0d0 to install Solaris. WARNING: ALL INFORMATION ON THE DISK WILL BE ERASED! Do you want to format /dev/dsk/c0t0d0? [y,n,?,q]
Formatting the hard drive will overwrite all existing data on the drive—you must ensure that, if you had previously installed an operating system on the target drive (c0t0d0), you have backed up all data that you will need in the future. This includes both user directories and application installations.
After pressing Y, the following screen will appear:
Enter a swap slice size between 384MB and 2027MB, default = 512MB [?]
| Note |
The swap size cannot be changed during filesystem layout. |
Press the ENTER key to accept the default on 512MB if your system has 256MB physical RAM, as the sample system has. However, as a general rule, you should only allocate twice the amount of physical RAM as swap space; otherwise, system performance will be impaired. The swap partition should be placed at the beginning of the drive, as the following message indicates, so that other slices are not dependent on its physical location:
The Installer prefers that the swap slice is at the beginning of the disk. This will allow the most flexible filesystem partitioning later in the installation. Can the swap slice start at the beginning of the disk [y,n,?,q]
After answering Y to this question, you will be asked to confirm the formatting settings:
You have selected the following to be used by the Solaris installer: Disk Slice : /dev/dsk/c0t0d0 Size : 1024 MB Start Cyl. : 0 WARNING: ALL INFORMATION ON THE DISK WILL BE ERASED! Is this OK [y,n,?,q]
If you answer Y, then the disk will be formatted and the miniroot file system will be copied to the disk, after which the system will be rebooted and the Web Start Wizard installation process can begin:
The Solaris installer will use disk slice, /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1. After files are copied, the system will automatically reboot, and installation will continue. Please Wait... Copying mini-root to local disk....done. Copying platform specific files....done. Preparing to reboot and continue installation. Rebooting to continue the installation. Syncing file systems... 41 done rebooting... Resetting ... SPARCstation 20 (1 X 390Z50), Keyboard Present ROM Rev. 2.4, 256 MB memory installed, Serial #456543 Ethernet address 5:2:12:c:ee:5a HostID 456543 Rebooting with command: boot /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:b Boot device: /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:b File and args: SunOS Release 5.8 Version Generic 32-bit Copyright 1983-2000 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Configuring /dev and /devices Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.